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04-03-2025
NEW YORK: Nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla, opens new tab dealership on Saturday, protesting owner Elon Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of President Donald Trump.
The protest, which police said involved hundreds of people, was one of a wave of “Tesla Takedown” demonstrations staged across the country targeting billionaire Musk, who is spearheading the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs reading “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy,” and “No Dictators in the USA.”
Musk, the world’s richest person, is leading an unprecedented push to shrink the federal government that has resulted in the firing of thousands of employees and the termination of hundreds of aid contracts and federal leases.
Tesla and a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to attempts to seek comment by phone and email on Saturday night.
In some cases, federal agencies have been forced to try to hire back key workers that had been fired, including some responsible for America’s nuclear weapons, scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of bird flu and officials responsible for supplying electricity.
At least 100,000 of the 2.3 million federal employees have agreed to buy-outs or have been fired since Trump took office on January 20.
“We are taking action at Tesla, Musk’s flagship company,” the organizers said on the website actionnetwork.org, calling for people to dump Tesla stock and “join the picket lines.”
“Detaching Musk from Tesla would be a meaningful blow against this administration and its prerogatives, because it would be a strike against what they hold most dear: money and power,” actor and filmmaker Alex Winter wrote in a Rolling Stone article. Winter has posted on social media that he helped organize the protests.
Last month US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the creation of a cryptocurrency working group tasked with proposing new digital asset regulations and exploring the creation of a national cryptocurrency stockpile, making good on his promise to quickly overhaul US crypto policy.
The much-anticipated action also ordered that banking services for crypto companies be protected, alluding to industry claims that US regulators have directed lenders to cut crypto companies off from banking services something regulators deny. The order also banned the creation of central bank digital currencies in the US which could compete with existing cryptocurrencies.
In another key action pushed for by the crypto industry, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late on Thursday rescinded accounting guidance that had made it very expensive for some listed companies to safeguard crypto assets on behalf of third parties. The crypto industry said that guidance had stymied digital asset adoption.
On the campaign trail, Trump courted crypto cash by pledging to be a “crypto president” and promote the adoption of digital assets. That is in stark contrast to former President Joe Biden’s regulators which, in a bid to protect Americans from fraud and money laundering, cracked down on the industry, suing exchanges Coinbase, Binance and dozens more, alleging they were flouting US laws. The companies deny the allegations. (Int’l News Desk)
